Angkor Wat (/ˌæŋkɔːrˈwɒt/; Khmer: អង្គរវត្ត, "Capital Temple") is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world,[1] on a site measuring 162.6 hectares (1,626,000 m2; 402 acres).[2] It was originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century.[3] It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II[4] in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (Khmer: យសោធរបុរៈ, present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu, as the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture, it has become a symbol of Cambodia,[5] appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.[6]

Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple, it is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi) north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. In an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures, it is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

According to legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.[10] According to the 13th-century Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.[11]

The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113 – c. 1150). Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the king's state temple and capital city, as neither the foundation stela nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished;[12] in 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer.[13] Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon respectively) a few kilometres to the north.

Towards the end of the 12th century, Angkor Wat gradually transformed from a Hindu centre of worship to Buddhism, which continues to the present day.[3] Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was somewhat neglected after the 16th century it was never completely abandoned, its preservation being due in part to the fact that its moat also provided some protection from encroachment by the jungle.[14]

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese friar who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of."[15]

By the 17th century, Angkor Wat was not completely abandoned and functioned as a Buddhist temple. Fourteen inscriptions dated from the 17th century discovered in Angkor area testify to Japanese Buddhist pilgrims that had established small settlements alongside Khmer locals,[16] at that time, the temple was thought by the Japanese visitors as the famed Jetavana garden of the Buddha, which originally located in the kingdom of Magadha, India.[17] The best-known inscription tells of Ukondafu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632.[18]

In the mid-19th century, the temple was visited by the French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:

One of these temples—a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo—might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings, it is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged.[19]

Angkor Wat may relate to the architecture of the Greek and Roman record explored in terms of the west rather than east orientation of the temple, some architects have written that it is 'correct' for the construction to be facing to the west. In temple orientations for the Greek and Etruscan context, west is associated with "right" and the "underworld" to suggest a religious connection of the building.[20]

Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, found it difficult to believe that the Khmers could have built the temple and mistakenly dated it to around the same era as Rome, the true history of Angkor Wat was pieced together only from stylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor site. There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of settlement, including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing usually found at ancient sites. Instead there is the evidence of the monuments themselves.[21]

Angkor Wat required considerable restoration in the 20th century, mainly the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation.[22] Work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period. Camping Khmer Rouge forces used whatever wood remained in the building structures for firewood, a pavilion was ruined by a stray American shell, and a shoot-out between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces put a few bullet holes in a bas relief. Far more damage was done after the wars, by art thieves working out of Thailand, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, claimed almost every head that could be lopped off the structures, including reconstructions.[23]

The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States and its neighbour Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863,[24] from a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937.[25] Angkor Wat's aesthetics were also on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called musée Indo-chinois which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from c.1880 to the mid-1920s.[26]

The splendid artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins, this quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of the country that had been under Siamese (Thai) control since AD 1351 (Manich Jumsai 2001), or by some accounts, AD 1431.[27] Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time, it is safe to say that from the colonial period onwards until the site's nomination as UNESCO World Heritage in 1992, this specific temple of Angkor Wat was instrumental in the formation of the modern and gradually globalised concept of built cultural heritage.[28]

In December 2015, it was announced that a research team from University of Sydney had found a previously unseen ensemble of buried towers built and demolished during the construction of Angkor Wat, as well as massive structure of unknown purpose on its south side and wooden fortifications, the findings also include evidence of low-density residential occupation in the region, with a road grid, ponds and mounds. These indicate that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been used exclusively by the priestly elite, as was previously thought, the team used LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation to map Angkor Wat.[29]

Angkor Wat, located at 13°24′45″N103°52′0″E﻿ / ﻿13.41250°N 103.86667°E﻿ / 13.41250; 103.86667, is a unique combination of the temple mountain (the standard design for the empire's state temples) and the later plan of concentric galleries. The construction of Angkor Wat also suggests that there was a celestial significance with certain features of the temple, this is observed in the temple's east-west orientation, and lines of sight from terraces within the temple that show specific towers to be at the precise location of the sunrise on a solstice[30]. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat symbolise the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.[31] Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level.[32]

Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east, this has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple.[33][34] Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction—prasavya in Hindu terminology—as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services,[22] the archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower.[35] It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse.[36] Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.[31]

A further interpretation of Angkor Wat has been proposed by Eleanor Mannikka. Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, she argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under King Suryavarman II: "as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power and to honour and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above."[37][38] Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles,[35] she distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.[39]

Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture—the Angkor Wat style—to which it has given its name. By the 12th century Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts, the binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.[40]

The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions, it is a work of power, unity and style."[41]

Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work.[42] Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gildedstucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.[43]

The outer wall, 1,024 m (3,360 ft) by 802 m (2,631 ft) and 4.5 m (15 ft) high, is surrounded by a 30 m (98 ft) apron of open ground and a moat 190 m (620 ft) wide. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge.[44] There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points; the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper.[45] Under the southern tower is a statue of Vishnu, known as Ta Reach, which may originally have occupied the temple's central shrine.[44] Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as they are large enough to admit those animals, these galleries have square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner (east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth.

The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres (203 acres), which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets.[46] Most of the area is now covered by forest. A 350 m (1,150 ft) causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself, the ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure.[46]

Aerial view of the central structure; in front of the central structure lies the cruciform terrace.

The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city, it is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu,[12] each gallery has a gopura at each of the points, and the two inner galleries each have towers at their corners, forming a quincunx with the central tower. Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides.

A tower of Angkor Wat

The outer gallery measures 187 m (614 ft) by 215 m (705 ft), with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called Preah Poan (the "Hall of a Thousand Gods"). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese, the four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water.[47] North and south of the cloister are libraries.

Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition, from the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The second-level enclosure is 100 m (330 ft) by 115 m (377 ft), and may originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru.[48] Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery, the very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods.[49] This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m (200 ft) square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers. The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines, the tower above the central shrine rises 43 m (141 ft) to a height of 65 m (213 ft) above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains, the central tower is raised above the surrounding four.[50] The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism, the new walls featuring standing Buddhas; in 1934, the conservator George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.[51]

Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes, the inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these, "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving",[52] from the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism.[citation needed]

Decoration on the corner

On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92[53]asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice).[54] It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition), the northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst"),[55] and a battle between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna.[citation needed]

Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory.[56] Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images (30 cm (12 in)–40 cm (16 in)) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95 cm (37 in)–110 cm (43 in)) more prominently at every level of the temple from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewellery and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.[57]

The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find, the blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm (0.98 in) in diameter and 3 cm (1.2 in) deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place.

The monument was made out of 5 million to 10 million sandstone blocks with a maximum weight of 1.5 tons each.[58] In fact, the entire city of Angkor used up far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined, and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids which use limestone quarried barely 0.5 km (0.31 mi) away all the time, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (25 mi) (or more) away.[59] This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 25 miles (40 km) to the northeast. The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres (22 mi) along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres (22 mi) crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres (56 mi). However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japanese have discovered in 2011 a shorter 35-kilometre (22 mi) canal connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead.[60]

Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels and even roofs are carved. There are miles of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hair styles, the gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1,000 square metres of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets, these were highly prized in ancient times and were a prime target for robbers. While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 4 feet (1.2 m), this took about 60 days to carve.[61] Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone,[62] the labour force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artefacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.[21][36]

As with most other ancient temples in Cambodia, Angkor Wat has faced extensive damage and deterioration by a combination of plant overgrowth, fungi, ground movements, war damage and theft, the war damage to Angkor Wat's temples however has been very limited, compared to the rest of Cambodia's temple ruins, and it has also received the most attentive restoration.[23]

Bullet holes left by a shoot-out between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces at Angkor Wat.

The restoration of Angkor Wat in the modern era began with the establishment of the Conservation d'Angkor (Angkor Conservancy) by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 1908; before that date, activities at the site were primarily concerned with exploration.[63][64] The Conservation d'Angkor was responsible for the research, conservation, and restoration activities carried out at Angkor until the early 1970s,[65] and a major restoration of Angkor was undertaken in the 1960s.[66] However, work on Angkor was abandoned during the Khmer Rouge era and the Conservation d'Angkor was disbanded in 1975.[67] Between 1986 and 1992, the Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple,[68] as France did not recognise the Cambodian government at the time. Criticism has been raised about both the early French restoration attempts and particularly the later Indian work, with concerns over damage done to the stone surface by the use of chemicals and cement.[23][69][70]

In 1992, following an appeal for help by Norodom Sihanouk, Angkor Wat was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger (later removed in 2004) and World Heritage Site together with an appeal by UNESCO to the international community to save Angkor.[71][72] Zoning of the area was set up to protect the Angkor site in 1994,[73]APSARA was established in 1995 to protect and manage the area, and a law to protect Cambodian heritage was passed in 1996.[74][75] A number of countries such as France, Japan and China are currently involved in various Angkor Wat conservation projects, the German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas, and other bas-reliefs which decorate the temple, from damage. The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts.[76] Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002,[77] while a Japanese team completed restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005.[78]World Monuments Fund began conservation work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008 after several years of studies on its condition. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces, the main phase of work ended in 2012, with the final component being the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in 2013.

The restored head of a naga beside an unrestored lion at the start of the causeway leading to the entrance of Angkor Wat. The contrast of restored and unrestored figures is deliberate, the major restoration of the causeway was first initiated in the 1960s by the French.

Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor, the dehydration- and radiation-resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan.[79] Replicas were also made to replace some of the lost or damaged sculptures.[80]

Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination; in 1993, there were only 7,650 visitors to the site;[81] by 2004, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had arrived in Siem Reap province that year, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia.[82] The number reached over a million in 2007,[83] and over two million by 2012.[84] Most visited Angkor Wat, which received over two million foreign tourists in 2013,[85] the site has been managed by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance—as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian authorities.[86]

Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years, UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organised seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism".[87] Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasised the importance of providing high quality accommodation and services in order for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture;[87] in 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist City" which would be developed with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large numbers of tourists.[87]

The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features.[87] Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems,[87] it has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat.[87] Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern that the charm and atmosphere of their town have been compromised in order to entertain tourism,[87] since this local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, the local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture.[87]

At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, it was agreed that Borobudur and Angkor Wat would become sister sites and the provinces sister provinces.[88]

1.
Angkor Wat (band)
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Angkorwar Angkor Wat was an American Thrash metal band from Corpus Christi, Texas. Named after the Hindu-then-Buddhist temple complex, they were forerunners of the punk scene that emerged from Corpus Christi in the mid-eighties. Angkor Wat was formed by Adam Grossman, Danny Lohner, Dave Nuss, Dave Brinkman, Mike Titsworth joined the band after Mike T. left the group, with the former two being the core of the band. Their energetic live performances along with their blend of thrash metal and hardcore punk landed the band a deal with Metal Blade Records. A third album was recorded under the name Angkor Wat, in 1990, Adam Grossman and Danny Lohner relocated to Austin and continued their musical partnership under the name Skrew, a project that had industrial music leanings. Lohner later became known for his collaborations with such as Trent Reznor, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson. Studio albums When Obscenity Becomes the Norm. Awake, Corpus Christi Compilations When Obscenity Becomes the Norm. Awake. /Corpus Christi

2.
Angkor
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Angkor was the capital city of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. Angkor was a megacity supporting at least 0. 1% of the population during 1010-1220. The city houses the magnificent Angkor Wat, one of Cambodias popular tourist attractions, the word Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit nagara, meaning city. A Khmer rebellion against Siamese authority resulted in the 1431 sacking of Angkor by Ayutthaya, the ruins of Angkor are located amid forests and farmland north of the Great Lake and south of the Kulen Hills, near modern-day Siem Reap city, in Siem Reap Province. Many of the temples at Angkor have been restored, and together, visitors approach two million annually, and the entire expanse, including Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom is collectively protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The popularity of the site among tourists presents multiple challenges to the preservation of the ruins, Angkor is considered to be a hydraulic city because it had a complicated water management network, which was used for systematically stabilizing, storing, and dispersing water throughout the area. This network is believed to have used for irrigation in order to offset the unpredictable monsoon season. Although the size of its remains a topic of research and debate. Before Jayavarman, Cambodia had consisted of a number of independent principalities collectively known to the Chinese by the names Funan. In 889, Yasovarman ascended to the throne, a great king and an accomplished builder, he was celebrated by one inscription as a lion-man, he tore the enemy with the claws of his grandeur, his teeth were his policies, his eyes were the Veda. Near the old capital of Hariharalaya, Yasovarman constructed a new city, in the tradition of his predecessors, he also constructed a massive reservoir called baray. The mountain, in turn, was represented by an elevated temple, in accordance with this cosmic symbolism, Yasovarman built his central temple on a low hill known as Phnom Bakheng, surrounding it with a moat fed from the baray. He also built numerous other Hindu temples and ashrams, or retreats for ascetics, over the next 300 years, between 900 and 1200, the Khmer Empire produced some of the worlds most magnificent architectural masterpieces in the area known as Angkor. Some 72 major temples or other buildings are found within this area, because of the low-density and dispersed nature of the medieval Khmer settlement pattern, Angkor lacks a formal boundary, and its extent is therefore difficult to determine. In terms of spatial extent, this makes it the largest urban agglomeration in recorded history prior to the Industrial Revolution, at its peak, the city occupied an area greater than modern Paris, and its buildings use far more stone than all of the Egyptian structures combined. The principal temple of the Angkorian region, Angkor Wat, was built between 1113 and 1150 by King Suryavarman II, Suryavarman ascended to the throne after prevailing in a battle with a rival prince. An inscription says that, in the course of combat, Suryavarman leapt onto his rivals war elephant and killed him, just as the mythical bird-man Garuda slays a serpent. Breaking with the tradition of the Khmer kings, and influenced perhaps by the concurrent rise of Vaisnavism in India, the traditional theme of identifying the Khmer devaraja with the gods, and his residence with that of the celestials, is very much in evidence

3.
Siem Reap Province
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Siem Reap is a province of Cambodia. It borders the provinces of Oddar Meanchey to the north, Preah Vihear and Kampong Thom to the east, Battambang to the south and its capital and largest city is Siem Reap. Siem Reap is the 10th largest province in Cambodia, with a population of 896,309, it ranks as the 6th largest in the nation. A large portion of Siem Reaps southern border is demarcated by the Tonle Sap and as such, in modern times the province is best known as the site of Angkor and the Angkor Wat temple ruins. The name Siem Reap literally means Siam Defeated, a reminder of the conflict between the Siamese and the Khmer. In Siam, the province and its capital were called Siemmarat, the Inner Cambodia province was split into Battambang and Siem Reap by the royal decree of King Sisowath the same year. This area became part of a territory between France and Siam which led to the Franco-Thai War in 1941, resulting in victory for Thailand. The province again reverted to Cambodia in 1946, after the end of World War II with French, the province is subdivided into 12 districts,100 communes and 907 villages. Siem Reap - The Gate to Angkor (Official Website of the Provincial Town Siem Reap on www. rithyrineangkorresidence. com

4.
Cambodia
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Cambodia, officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometres in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia has a population of over 15 million. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, practiced by approximately 95 percent of the population, the countrys minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams, and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic, the kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni, a monarch chosen by the Royal Throne Council, as head of state. The head of government is Hun Sen, who is currently the longest serving leader in South East Asia and has ruled Cambodia for over 25 years. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name Kambuja. The Indianized kingdom built monumental temples including Angkor Wat, now a World Heritage Site, after the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbours. In 1863 Cambodia became a protectorate of France which doubled the size of the country by reclaiming the north, the Vietnam War extended into the country with the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 until 1973. Following the Cambodian coup of 1970, the king gave his support to his former enemies. Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, Cambodia was governed briefly by a United Nations mission, the UN withdrew after holding elections in which around 90 percent of the registered voters cast ballots. The 1997 coup placed power solely in the hands of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian Peoples Party, important sociopolitical issues includes widespread poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of political freedoms, low human development, and a high rate of hunger. While per capita income remains low compared to most neighbouring countries, agriculture remains the dominant economic sector, with strong growth in textiles, construction, garments, and tourism leading to increased foreign investment and international trade. Cambodia scored dismally in an annual index ranking the rule of law in 102 countries, placing 99th overall, Cambodia also faces environmental destruction as an imminent problem. The most severe activity in this regard is considered to be the countrywide deforestation, the Kingdom of Cambodia is the official English name of the country. The English Cambodia is an anglicisation of the French Cambodge, which in turn is the French transliteration of the Khmer Kampuchea, Kampuchea is the shortened alternative to the countrys official name in Khmer, Preah Reacheanachak Kampuchea. The Khmer endonym Kampuchea derives from the Sanskrit name Kambujadeśa, composed of देश, desa and कम्बोज, Kambujas, colloquially, Cambodians refer to their country as either Srok Khmer, meaning Khmers Land, or the slightly more formal Prateh Kampuchea, literally Country of Kampuchea. The name Cambodia is used most often in the Western world while Kampuchea is more used in the East. Excavations in its lower layers produced a series of dates as of 6000 BC

5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

6.
Suryavarman II
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His reigns monumental architecture, numerous military campaigns and restoration of strong government have led historians to rank Suryavarman as one of the empires greatest kings. Suryavarman appears to have grown up in an estate, at a time of weakening central control in the empire. An inscription lists his father as Ksitindraditya and his mother as Narendralakshmi, as a young prince, he maneuvered for power, contending he had a legitimate claim to the throne. “At the end of his studies, ” states an inscription, “Leaving on the field of combat the ocean of his armies, he delivered a terrible battle, ” states an inscription. “Bounding on the head of the elephant of the king, he killed him. Suryavarman II also sent a mission to the Chola dynasty of south India, Suryavarman was enthroned in 1113 AD. An aged Brahmin sage named Divakarapandita oversaw the ceremonies, this being the time the priest had officiated coronation. Inscriptions record that the new monarch studied sacred rituals, celebrated religious festivals and gave gifts to the priest such as palanquins, fans, crowns, buckets and rings. The priest embarked on a tour of temples in the empire, including the mountaintop Preah Vihear. The king’s formal coronation took place in 1119 AD, with Divakarapandita again performing the rites, the first two syllables in the monarchs name are a Sanskrit language root meaning sun. Varman is the one who mastered Varma kalai or otherwise the traditional suffix of Pallava dynasty that is translated as shield or protector. During his decades in power, the reunited the empire. He staged large military operations in the east against the Chams, in 1128 AD, he is said to have led 20,000 soldiers against Dai-Viet, but they were defeated and chased out. The next year he sent a fleet of more than 700 vessels to attack its coast, in 1132 AD, combined Khmer and Cham forces again invaded, with a final attempt in 1138, to no real success. Later, the Cham king Jaya Indravarman III made peace with Dai-Viet, in 1145 AD, Suryavarman appears to have invaded Champa, defeated its king Jaya Indravarman III, and sacked the capital Vijaya. On the Cham throne he placed a new king, Harideva, in subsequent fighting, Cham forces recaptured the capital and killed Harideva. A final expedition in 1150 ended in a disastrous withdrawal, in addition to war, Suryavarman practiced diplomacy, resuming formal relations with China in 1116 AD. A Chinese account of the 13th century says that the Khmer embassy had 14 members, “Scarcely have we arrived to contemplate anear your glory than we are already filled with your benefits, ” one of the ambassadors is quoted as telling the Chinese emperor

7.
Jayavarman VII
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Jayavarman VII, post-humous name of Mahaparamasaugata, was a king of the Khmer Empire in present-day Siem Reap, Cambodia. He was the son of King Dharanindravarman II and Queen Sri Jayarajacudamani and he married Princess Jayarajadevi and then, after her death, married her sister Indradevi. The two women are thought to have been a great inspiration to him, particularly in his unusual devotion to Buddhism. Jayavarman VII is generally considered by historians the most powerful Khmer monarch of all time, in 1177 and again in 1178, the Cham invaded Cambodia. The invaders pillaged the Khmer capital of Yasodharapura and put king Tribhuvanadityavarman to death, also in 1178, Jayavarman came to historical prominence by leading a Khmer army that ousted the invaders, which included a naval battle depicted on the walls of the Bayon and Banteay Chmar. At the time, he may already have been in his 60s, returning to the capital, he found it in disorder. He put an end to the disputes between warring factions and in 1181 was crowned king himself, early in his reign, he probably repelled another Cham attack and quelled a rebellion of the vassal Kingdom of Malyang. He was greatly helped by the skill of refugee Prince Sri Vidyanandana. Jayavarman expanded Khmer control of the Mekong Valley northward to Vientiane and to the south, over the 30 some years of his reign, Jayavarman embarked on a grand program of construction that included both public works and monuments. As a Mahayana Buddhist, his aim was to alleviate the suffering of his people. One inscription tells us, He suffered from the illnesses of his subjects more than from his own, the pain that affected mens bodies was for him a spiritual pain, historians have identified many facets in Jayavarmans intensive building program. In one phase, he focused on useful constructions, such as his famous 102 hospitals, rest houses along the roads, and reservoirs. Thereafter, he built a pair of temples in honor of his parents, Ta Prohm in honor of his mother, finally, he constructed his own temple-mountain at Bayon and developed the city of Angkor Thom around it. He also built Neak Pean, one of the smallest but most beautiful temples in the Angkor complex, in 1186, Jayavarman dedicated Ta Prohm to his mother. An inscription indicates that this temple at one time had 80,000 people assigned to its upkeep. Angkor Thom was a new city centre, called in its day Indrapattha, at the centre of the new city stands one of his most massive achievements—the temple now called the Bayon, a multi-faceted, multi-towered temple that mixes Buddhist and Hindu iconography. Its outer walls have startling bas reliefs not only of warfare but the life of the Khmer army. These reliefs show camp followers on the move with animals and oxcarts, hunters, women cooking, female traders selling to Chinese merchants, the reliefs also depict a naval battle on the great lake, the Tonle Sap

8.
Khmer Empire
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The Khmer Empire, officially the Angkor Empire, the predecessor state to modern Cambodia, was a powerful Hindu-Buddhist empire in Southeast Asia. The empire, which out of the former kingdoms of Funan and Chenla. Its greatest legacy is Angkor, in present-day Cambodia, which was the site of the city during the empires zenith. Satellite imaging has revealed that Angkor, during its peak in the 11th to 13th centuries, was the largest pre-industrial urban centre in the world, the beginning of the era of the Khmer Empire is conventionally dated to 802 CE. In this year, King Jayavarman II had himself declared chakravartin on Phnom Kulen, the empire ended with the fall of Angkor in the 15th century. The history of Angkor as the area of settlement of the historical kingdom of Kambujadesa is also the history of the Khmer kingdom from the 9th to the 13th centuries. From Kambuja itself — and so also from the Angkor region — no written records have survived other than stone inscriptions, according to Sdok Kok Thom inscription, circa 781 Indrapura was the first capital of Jayavarman II, located in Banteay Prei Nokor, near todays Kompong Cham. He then moved his court northwest to Mahendraparvata, far north from the great lake of Tonle Sap. At that ceremony Prince Jayavarman II was proclaimed a universal monarch or God King and he declared himself Chakravartin, in a ritual taken from the Indian-Hindu tradition. Thereby he not only became the divinely appointed and therefore uncontested ruler, at that time, Sailendras allegedly ruled over Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and parts of Cambodia, around the Mekong delta. The first pieces of information on Jayavarman II came from the K.235 stone inscription on a stele in Sdok Kok Thom temple, Isan region, dating to 1053. It recounts two and a half centuries of service members of the temples founding family provided for the Khmer court. This classical theory was revisited by scholars, such as Claude Jacques and Michael Vickery. Moreover, Jayavarmans political career began at Vyadhapura in eastern Cambodia, finally, many early temples on Phnom Kulen shows both Cham and Javanese influences, even if their asymmetric distribution seems typically khmer. He thereby laid the foundation of Angkor, which was to arise some 15 km to the northwest, Jayavarman II died in the year 835 and he was succeeded by his son Jayavarman III. Jayavarman III died in 877 and was succeeded by Indravarman I, the successors of Jayavarman II continually extended the territory of Kambuja. Indravarman I managed to expand the kingdom without wars, and he began extensive building projects, thanks to the wealth gained through trade, foremost were the temple of Preah Ko and irrigation works. Indravarman I developed Hariharalaya further by constructing Bakong circa 881, Bakong in particular bears striking similarity to the Borobudur temple in Java, which strongly suggests that it served as the prototype for Bakong

9.
Khmer architecture
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The period of Angkor is the period in the history of the Khmer Empire from approximately the latter half of the 8th century AD to the first half of the 15th century CE. In any study of Angkorian architecture, the emphasis is necessarily on religious architecture, during the period of Angkor, only temples and other religious buildings were constructed of stone. Non-religious buildings such as dwellings were constructed of materials such as wood. The religious architecture of Angkor has characteristic structures, elements, and motifs, since a number of different architectural styles succeeded one another during the Angkorean period, not all of these features were equally in evidence throughout the period. Indeed, scholars have referred to the presence or absence of features as one source of evidence for dating the remains. Scholars have worked to develop a periodization of Angkorian architectural styles, the following periods and styles may be distinguished. Each is named for a particular temple regarded as paradigmatic for the style, the earliest surviving temple of Hariharalaya is Preah Ko, the others are Bakong and Lolei. The temples of the Preah Ko style are known for their small brick towers and for the great beauty, Bakheng Style, Bakheng was the first temple mountain constructed in the area of Angkor proper north of Siem Reap. It was the temple of King Yasovarman, who built his capital of Yasodharapura around it. Located on a hill, it is one of the most endangered of the monuments. Koh Ker Style, During the reign of King Jayavarman IV, the architectural style of temples in Koh Ker, scale of buildings diminishes toward center. Brick still main material but sandstone also used, Pre Rup Style, Under King Rajendravarman, the Angkorian Khmer built the temples of Pre Rup, East Mebon and Phimeanakas. Their common style is named after the temple mountain of Pre Rup. Banteay Srei Style, Banteay Srei is the only major Angkorian temple constructed not by a monarch and it is known for its small scale and the extreme refinement of its decorative carvings, including several famous narrative bas-reliefs dealing with scenes from Indian mythology. Khleang Style, The Khleang temples, first use of galleries, a few temples that were built in this style are Takeo, Phimeanakas. Its unique relief carvings have a dynamic quality that contrast with the rigidity of the figures typical of some other periods. As of 2008, Baphuon is under restoration and cannot currently be appreciated in its full magnificence, other temples in this style are Banteay Samre and Thommanon in the area of Angkor, and Phimai in modern Thailand. Baroque or Bayon Style, In the final quarter of the 12th century, thereafter, he began a massive program of monumental construction, paradigmatic for which was the state temple called the Bayon

10.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties

11.
Khmer language
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Khmer /kmɛər/ or Cambodian is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. With approximately 16 million speakers, it is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language, Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer, outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of the Khmer Empire. The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer is primarily an analytic, isolating language, there are no inflections, conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships, general word order is subject–verb–object, and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese, in spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure is common and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Thai, Burmese, Lao, words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by a minor syllable. The language has been written in the Khmer script, an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script, approximately 79% of Cambodians are able to read Khmer. Khmer is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon, Vietnamese and Munda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in a branch of the Mon-Khmer languages. In these classification schemes Khmers closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages, more recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia, where it is the official language and it is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand, Khmer dialects, although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south, the following is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects

12.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as fï¿½r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character

13.
Khmer alphabet
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The Khmer alphabet or Khmer script is an abugida script used to write the Khmer language. It is also used to write Pali in the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and it was adapted from the Pallava script, a variant of the Grantha alphabet descended from the Brahmi script, which was used in southern India and South East Asia during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The oldest dated inscription in Khmer was found at Angkor Borei District in Takéo Province south of Phnom Penh, the modern Khmer script differs somewhat from precedent forms seen on the inscriptions of the ruins of Angkor. The Thai and Lao scripts are descended from a form of the Khmer script. Khmer is written left to right. Words within the sentence or phrase are generally run together with no spaces between them. Consonant clusters within a word are stacked, with the consonant being written in reduced form under the main consonant. Originally there were 35 consonant characters, but modern Khmer uses only 33, each such character in fact represents a consonant sound together with an inherent vowel – either â or ô. Most dependent vowels have two different pronunciations, depending in most cases on the inherent vowel of the consonant to which they are added, in some positions, a consonant written with no dependent vowel is taken to be followed by the sound of its inherent vowel. There are also a number of used to indicate further modifications in pronunciation. The script also includes its own numerals and punctuation marks, there are 35 Khmer consonant symbols, although modern Khmer only uses 33, two having become obsolete. Each consonant has an inherent vowel, â /ɑː/ or ô /ɔː/, equivalently, a consonants series determines the pronunciation of the dependent vowel symbols which may be attached to it, and in some positions the sound of the inherent vowel is itself pronounced. Each consonant, with one exception, also has a subscript form and these may also be called sub-consonants, the Khmer phrase is ជើងអក្សរ cheung âksâr, meaning foot of a letter. Most subscript consonants resemble the corresponding consonant symbol, but in a smaller and possibly simplified form, most subscript consonants are written directly below other consonants, although subscript r appears to the left, while a few others have ascending elements which appear to the right. Subscripts are used in writing consonant clusters, clusters in Khmer normally consist of two consonants, although occasionally in the middle of a word there will be three. The first consonant in a cluster is written using the main consonant symbol, subscripts were previously also used to write final consonants, in modern Khmer this may be done, optionally, in some words ending -ng or -y, such as ឲ្យ aôy. The consonants and their forms are listed in the following table. Usual phonetic values are given using the International Phonetic Alphabet, variations are described below the table, the sound system is described in detail at Khmer phonology

14.
Brahmic scripts
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The Brahmic scripts are a family of abugida or alphabet writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia, and were used in Japan. They are used by languages of several families, Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian. They were also the source of the order of Japanese kana. Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script, the most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BC and published by Coningham et al. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, the Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan, the syllabic nature and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism. Southern Brahmi evolved into Old-Kannada, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India, Bhattiprolu was a great centre of Buddhism during 3rd century BCE and from where Buddhism spread to east Asia. The present Telugu script is derived from Bhattiprolu Script or Kannada-Telugu script or Kadamba script, also known as old Telugu script, owing to its similarity to the same. Initially, minor changes were made which is now called Tamil Brahmi which has far fewer letters than some of the other Indic scripts as it has no separate aspirated or voiced consonants. Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are, other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halant can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not part of a consonant, and a dependent form, when attached to a consonant. Depending on the script, the dependent forms can be placed to the left of, to the right of, above, below. Consonants can be combined in ligatures, special marks are added to denote the combination of r with another consonant. Nasalization and aspiration of a dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs. The alphabetical order is, vowels, velar consonants, palatal consonants, retroflex consonants, dental consonants, bilabial consonants, approximants, sibilants, Each consonant grouping had four stops, and a nasal consonant. Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, accordingly, The charts are not comprehensive. Glyphs may be unrepresented if they dont derive from any Brahmi character, the pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical

15.
Mojibake
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Mojibake, from the Japanese 文字 character + 化け transform, is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones. This display may include the replacement character � in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding and this is either because of differing constant length encoding, or the use of variable length encodings. Failed rendering of glyphs due to either missing fonts or missing glyphs in a font is a different issue that is not to be confused with mojibake, symptoms of this failed rendering include blocks with the codepoint displayed in hexadecimal or using the generic replacement character �. Importantly, these replacements are valid and are the result of error handling by the software. To correctly reproduce the text that was encoded, the correspondence between the encoded data and the notion of its encoding must be preserved. As mojibake is the instance of incompliance between these, it can be achieved by manipulating the data itself, or just relabeling it. Mojibake is often seen with text data that have been tagged with an encoding, it may not even be tagged at all. A major source of trouble are communication protocols that rely on settings on each computer rather than sending or storing metadata together with the data. Whereas Linux distributions mostly switched to UTF-8 for all uses of text, Microsoft Windows still uses codepages for text files, for some writing systems, an example being Japanese, several encodings have historically been employed, causing users to see mojibake relatively often. If the encoding is not specified, it is up to the software to decide it by other means, depending on type of software, the typical solution is either configuration or charset detection heuristics. Both are prone to mispredict in not-so-uncommon scenarios, the encoding of text files is usually governed by the OS-level setting, which depends on brand of operating system and possibly the users language. Therefore, the encoding is systematically wrong for files that come from a computer with a different setting. One solution is to use a byte order mark, but for source code and other machine readable text, another is storing the encoding as metadata in the filesystem. Filesystems that support extended file attributes can store this as user. charset and this also requires support in software that wants to take advantage of it, but does not disturb other software. While a few encodings are easy to detect, in particular UTF-8, Mojibake also occurs when the encoding is wrongly specified. This often happens between encodings that are similar, for example, the Eudora email client for Windows was known to send emails labelled as ISO-8859-1 that were in reality Windows-1252

16.
Hinduism
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Hinduism is a religion, or a way of life, found most notably in India and Nepal. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanātana Dharma, scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This Hindu synthesis started to develop between 500 BCE and 300 CE following the Vedic period, although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, it is linked by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, shared textual resources, and pilgrimage to sacred sites. Hindu texts are classified into Shruti and Smriti and these texts discuss theology, philosophy, mythology, Vedic yajna, Yoga, agamic rituals, and temple building, among other topics. Major scriptures include the Vedas and Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, prominent themes in Hindu beliefs include the four Puruṣārthas, the proper goals or aims of human life, namely Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, karma, samsara, and the various Yogas. Hindu practices include such as puja and recitations, meditation, family-oriented rites of passage, annual festivals. Some Hindus leave their world and material possessions, then engage in lifelong Sannyasa to achieve Moksha. Hinduism prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings, patience, forbearance, self-restraint, Hinduism is the worlds third largest religion, with over one billion followers or 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. The majority of Hindus reside in India, Nepal, Mauritius, the Caribbean, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan/Sanskrit word Sindhu, the Indo-Aryan name for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. The term Hindu in these ancient records is a geographical term, the Arabic term al-Hind referred to the people who live across the River Indus. This Arabic term was taken from the pre-Islamic Persian term Hindū. By the 13th century, Hindustan emerged as an alternative name of India. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus. The term Hinduism, then spelled Hindooism, was introduced into the English language in the 18th-century to denote the religious, philosophical, because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion defies our desire to define and categorize it, Hinduism has been variously defined as a religion, a religious tradition, a set of religious beliefs, and a way of life. From a Western lexical standpoint, Hinduism like other faiths is appropriately referred to as a religion, in India the term dharma is preferred, which is broader than the western term religion. Hindu traditionalists prefer to call it Sanatana Dharma, the study of India and its cultures and religions, and the definition of Hinduism, has been shaped by the interests of colonialism and by Western notions of religion. Since the 1990s, those influences and its outcomes have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism, Hinduism as it is commonly known can be subdivided into a number of major currents

17.
Hindu
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Hindu refers to any person who regards themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism. It has historically used as a geographical, cultural, or religious identifier for people indigenous to South Asia. The historical meaning of the term Hindu has evolved with time, by the 16th century, the term began to refer to residents of India who were not Turks or Muslims. The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear, competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it developed post-8th century CE after the Islamic invasion and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma, the Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term Hindu in religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for Mughals, scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon. Hindoo is a spelling variant, whose use today may be considered derogatory. At more than 1.03 billion, Hindus are the third largest group after Christians. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million, live in India, according to Indias 2011 census. After India, the next 9 countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom and Myanmar. These together accounted for 99% of the worlds Hindu population, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means a large body of water, covering river, ocean. It was used as the name of the Indus river and also referred to its tributaries, the Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhava in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hidush, the people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text Chachnama. The term Hindu in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term, the Arabic equivalent Al-Hind likewise referred to the country of India. Among the earliest known records of Hindu with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Record of the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang, Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose connotation overflows in the religious according to Arvind Sharma. The Hindu community occurs as the amorphous Other of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that Hindu retained its geographical reference initially, Indian, indigenous, local, virtually native. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves, the poet Vidyapatis poem Kirtilata contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks in a city and concludes The Hindus and the Turks live close together, Each makes fun of the others religion

18.
History of Hinduism
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History of Hinduism denotes a wide variety of related Hindu denominations native to the Indian Subcontinent, most of whom live in modern-day Nepal and India. Its history overlaps or coincides with the development of Indian religions since Iron Age India and it has thus been called the oldest living religion in the world. Scholars regard Hinduism as a synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots, the history of Hinduism is often divided into periods of development, with the first period being that of the historical Vedic religion dated from about 1900 BCE to 1400 BCE. The subsequent period, between 800 BCE and 200 BCE, is a point between the Vedic religion and Hindu religions, and a formative period for Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. The Epic and Early Puranic period, from c.200 BCE to 500 CE, saw the classical Golden Age of Hinduism (, in this period the six branches of Hindu philosophy evolved, namely Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedanta. Monotheistic sects like Shaivism and Vaishnavism developed during this period through the Bhakti movement. Hinduism under both Hindu and Islamic rulers from c.1200 to 1750 CE, saw the prominence of the Bhakti movement. The colonial period saw the emergence of various Hindu reform movements partly inspired by movements, such as Unitarianism. The Partition of India in 1947 was along religious lines, with the Republic of India emerging with a Hindu majority. During the 20th century, due to the Indian diaspora, Hindu minorities have formed in all continents, with the largest communities in absolute numbers in the United States, Western scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions. After the Vedic period, between 500-200 BCE and c.300 CE, at the beginning of the Epic and Puranic c. q. Preclassical period, the Hindu synthesis emerged, which incorporated śramaṇic and Buddhist influences and this synthesis emerged under the pressure of the success of Buddhism and Jainism. During the Gupta reign the first Puranas were written, which were used to disseminate mainstream religious ideology amongst pre-literate, the resulting Puranic Hinduism differed markedly from the earlier Brahmanism of the Dharmaśāstras and the smritis. Hinduism co-existed for several centuries with Buddhism, to gain the upper hand at all levels in the 8th century. From northern India this Hindu synthesis, and its divisions, spread to southern India. This process of assimilation explains the diversity of local cultures in India half shrouded in a taddered cloak of conceptual unity. James Mill, in his The History of British India, distinguished three phases in the history of India, namely Hindu, Muslim and British civilisations and this periodisation has been criticised, for the misconceptions it has given rise to. Another periodisation is the division into ancient, classical, medieval and modern periods, the division in Ancient-Medieval-Modern overlooks the fact that the Muslim-conquests took place between the eight and the fourteenth century, while the south was never completely conquered

19.
Puranic chronology
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The Puranic chronology gives a timeline of Hindu history according to the Hindu scriptures. Two central dates are the Mahabharata War, which according to this chronology happened at 3139 BCE, and the start of the Kali Yuga, which according to this chronology started at 3102 BCE. The Puranic chronology is referred to by proponents of Indigenous Aryans to propose an earlier dating of the Vedic period, the Puranas contain stories about the creation of the world, and the yugas. Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas also contain genealogies of kings, wendy Doniger, based on the study of indologists, assigns approximate dates to the various Puranas. She dates Markandeya Purana to c.250 CE, Matsya Purana to c, 250–500 CE, Vayu Purana to c.350 CE, Harivamsa and Vishnu Purana to c.450 CE, Brahmanda Purana to c. 350–950 CE, Vamana Purana to c, 450–900 CE, Kurma Purana to c. 550–850 CE, and Linga Purana to c, the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana also contain lists of kings and genealogies, from which the traditional chronology of Indias ancient history are derived. The existing text of the Mahabharata went through many layers of development, according to Professor Alf Hiltebeitel, the Mahabharata is essentially mythological. Indian historian Upinder Singh has written that, Whether a bitter war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ever happened cannot be proved or disproved and it is possible that there was a small-scale conflict, transformed into a gigantic epic war by bards and poets. Some historians and archaeologists have argued that conflict may have occurred in about 1000 BCE. Despite the inconclusiveness of the data, attempts have been made to assign a date to the Kurukshetra War. Popular tradition holds that the war marks the transition to Kaliyuga, a number of other proposals have been put forward, P. V. Vartak calculates a date of October 16,5561 BCE using planetary positions. P. V. Holey states a date of 13 November 3143 BCE using planetary positions, K. Sadananda, based on translation work, states that the Kurukshetra War started on November 22,3067 BCE. B. N. Achar used planetarium software to argue that the Mahabharata War took place in 3067 BCE, S. Balakrishna concluded a date of 2559 BCE using consecutive lunar eclipses. R. N. Iyengar concluded a date of 1478 BCE using double eclipses, P. R. Sarkar estimates a date of 1298 BCE for the war of Kurukshetra. V. S. Dubey claims that the war happened near 950 BCE The Puranas contain stories about the creation of the world, and the yugas. There are four yugas in one cycle, Satya Yuga, a time of truth and righteousness, Treta Yuga Dvapara Yuga Kali Yuga and these 4 yugas follow a timeline ratio of. 1500 BCE and proposing older dates for the Vedic period, according to the Indigenist position, the Aryans are indigenous to India, and the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations

20.
Hindu mythology
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As such, it is a subset of mainstream Indian and Nepali culture. The roots of mythology that evolved from classical Hinduism come from the times of the Vedic civilization, the four Vedas, notably the hymns of the Rigveda, contain allusions to many themes. The characters, philosophy and stories make up ancient Vedic myths are indelibly linked with Hindu beliefs. The Vedas are four in number, namely RigVeda, YajurVeda, SamaVeda, in the period of Classical Sanskrit, much material is preserved in the Sanskrit epics. Besides mythology proper, the voluminous epics also provide a range of information about ancient Nepali and Indian society, philosophy, culture, religion. The two great Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata tell the story of two incarnations of Vishnu. These two works are known as Itihasa, the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana serve as both religious scriptures and a rich source of philosophy and morality. The most famous of these chapters is the Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata, in which Lord Krishna explains the concepts of duty and these stories are deeply embedded in Hindu philosophy and serve as parables and sources of devotion for Hindus. The Mahabharata is the worlds longest epic in verse, running to more than 2,000,000 lines, the epics themselves are set in different Yugas, or periods of time. The Ramayana, written by the Maharshi Valmiki, describes the life and times of Lord Rama, the Mahabharata, describing the life and times of the Pandavas, occurs in the Dvapara Yuga, a period associated with Lord Krishna. In total, there are 4 Yugas and these are the Satya or Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga, and the Kali Yuga. The avatara concept, however, belongs to the Puranic times, the Puranas deal with stories that are old and do not appear in the epics. They contain legends and stories about the origins of the world, and the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. They contain traditions related to ancient kings, seers, incarnations of God and legends about holy places, the Bhagavata Purana is probably the most read and popular of the Puranas. It chronicles the legends of the god Vishnu and his avatars on earth, the act of creation was thought of in more than one manner. One of the oldest cosmogonic myth in the Rigveda had come into existence as a cosmic egg, the Purusha Sukta narrates that all things were made out of the mangled limbs of Purusha, a magnified non-natural man, who was sacrificed by the gods. In the Puranas, Vishnu, in the shape of a boar, plunged into the cosmic waters, the Shatapatha Brahmana says that in the beginning, Prajapati, the first creator or father of all, was alone in the world. He differentiated himself into two beings, husband and wife, the wife, regarding union with her producer as incest, fled from his embraces assuming various animal disguises

21.
Brahman
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In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe. In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the material, efficient and it is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. Brahman as a concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe. Brahman is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and it is conceptualized in Hinduism, states Paul Deussen, Brahman is a key concept found in the Vedas, and it is extensively discussed in the early Upanishads. The Vedas conceptualize Brahman as the Cosmic Principle, in the Upanishads, it has been variously described as Sat-cit-ānanda and as the unchanging, permanent, highest reality. Brahman is discussed in Hindu texts with the concept of Atman, personal, impersonal or Para Brahman, or in various combinations of these qualities depending on the philosophical school. In dualistic schools of Hinduism such as the theistic Dvaita Vedanta, Brahman is different from Atman in each being, Brahman is thus a gender-neutral concept that implies greater impersonality than masculine or feminine conceptions of the deity. Brahman is referred to as the supreme self, puligandla states it as the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world, while Sinar states Brahman is a concept that cannot be exactly defined. In Vedic Sanskrit, Brahma, brahman from root bṛh-, means to be or make firm, strong, solid, expand, promote. Brahmana, from stems brha + Sanskrit -man- from Indo-European root -men- which denotes some manifested form of power, inherent firmness. In later Sanskrit usage, Brahma, brahman means the concept of the transcendent and immanent ultimate reality, the concept is central to Hindu philosophy, especially Vedanta, this is discussed below. Brahm is another variant of Brahman, Brahmā, Brahman, means the deity or deva Prajāpati Brahmā. He is one of the members of the Hindu trinity and associated with creation, but does not have a cult in present-day India. This is because Brahmā, the creator-god, is long-lived but not eternal i. e. Brahmā gets absorbed back into Purusha at the end of an aeon, and is born again at the beginning of a new kalpa. These are distinct from, A brāhmaṇa, is a commentary on the Vedic mantras—an integral part of the Vedic literature. A brāhmaṇa, means priest, in this usage the word is rendered in English as Brahmin. This usage is found in the Atharva Veda. Ishvara, in Advaita, is identified as a partial manifestation of the ultimate reality

22.
God in Hinduism
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In Hindu monotheism, the concept of God varies from one sect to another. Hinduism is not exclusively monotheistic, and has described as spanning a wide range of henotheism, monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, pandeism, monism, atheism and nontheism etc. This non-dualism postulates the identity of the Self or Atman with the Whole or Brahman, forms of explicit monotheism find mention in the canonical Bhagavad Gita. Explicit monotheism in the form of emotional or ecstatic devotion to an external and personal deity became popular in South India in the early medieval period. Ecstatic devotion to Krishna, a form of Vishnu, gained popularity throughout India during the Middle Ages, ecstatic devotion to Goddess Durga became popular in some parts of India in the later medieval and early modern ages. Vaishnavism, particularly Krishnaism, Shaktism and some forms of Shaivism remain the most explicit forms of worship of a personal God within Hinduism. Other Hindus, such as many of those who practice Shaivism, tend to assume the existence of a singular God, rather they envisage God as an impersonal Absolute, who can be worshipped only in part in a human form. The term Ishvara may refer to any of the monotheistic or monistic conceptions within Hinduism, in Hinduism, Brahman is the all-pervading, supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead, Brahman is conceived as personal, impersonal and/or supreme depending on the philosophical school. The sages of the Upanishads teach that Brahman is the essence of material phenomena that cannot be seen or heard. According to Advaita, a human being has realised Brahman as his or her own true self. The Isha Upanishad says, Auṃ – That supreme Brahman is infinite, if you subtract the infinite from the infinite, the infinite remains alone. The sages of the Upanishads made their pronouncements on the basis of experience as an essential component of their philosophical reflection. Several mahā-vākyas from the Upanisads indicate what the principle of Brahma is, In the Upanisads the sages teach that brahman is infinite Being, infinite Consciousness, and infinite Bliss. Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism posits that Brahman cannot be known by empirical means — that is to say, as an object of our consciousness — because Brahman is our very consciousness and being. Therefore, it may be said that moksha, yoga, samādhi, nirvana, etc. do not merely mean to know Brahman, but rather to realise ones brahman-hood, to actually realise that one is and always was Brahman. Indeed, closely related to the Self-concept of Brahman is the idea that it is synonymous with jiva-atma, or individual souls, according to Adi Shankara the nirguna brahman is non-different from the supreme personality, God, whatever qualities we attribute to the divine. By the power of Maya the supreme lord playfully creates multiple worlds and deludes all beings and this world is only relatively real and the real self is not affected by it

23.
Sannyasa
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Sannyasa is the life stage of renunciation within the Hindu philosophy of four age-based life stages known as ashramas, with the first three being Brahmacharya, Grihastha and Vanaprastha. Sannyasa has historically been a stage of renunciation, ahimsa peaceful and simple life, however, this has not always been the case. These warrior sanyasis played an important role in helping European colonial powers establish themselves in India, saṃnyāsa in Sanskrit means renunciation of the world and abandonment. It is a word of saṃ- which means together, all, ni- which means down and āsa from the root as. A literal translation of Sannyāsa is thus to put down everything, Sannyasa is sometimes spelled as Sanyasa. The term Saṃnyasa makes appearance in the Samhitas, Aranyakas and Brahmanas, the earliest layers of Vedic literature, but it is rare. The term Sannyasa evolves into a rite of renunciation in ancient Sutra texts, in Dravidian languages, sannyasi is pronounced as sanyasi and also sannasi in colloquial form. Sanyasis are also known as Bhiksu, Pravrajita/Pravrajitā, Yati, Sramana, jamison and Witzel state early Vedic texts make no mention of Sannyasa, or Ashrama system, unlike the concepts of Brahmacharin and Grihastha which they do mention. Instead, Rig Veda uses the term Antigriha in hymn 10.95.4, still part of extended family and it is in later Vedic era and over time, Sannyasa and other new concepts emerged, while older ideas evolved and expanded. The explicit use of the four stage Ashrama concept, appeared a few centuries later, however, early Vedic literature from 2nd millennium BC, mentions Muni, with characteristics that mirror those found in later Sannyasins and Sannyasinis. Rig Veda, for example, in Book 10 Chapter 136, mentions mendicants as those with Kesin, rigveda, however, refers to these people as Muni and Vati. The Munis, girdled with the wind, wear garments of soil hue, They, following the winds swift course and these Munis, their lifestyle and spiritual pursuit, likely influenced the Sannyasa concept, as well as the ideas behind the ancient concept of Brahmacharya. One class of Munis were associated with Rudra and this freedom has led to diversity and significant differences in the lifestyle and goals of those who adopt Sannyasa. There are, however, some common themes, a person in Sannyasa lives a simple life, typically detached, itinerant, drifting from place to place, with no material possessions or emotional attachments. They may have a stick, a book, a container or vessel for food and drink, often wearing yellow, saffron, orange. They may have hair and appear disheveled, and are usually vegetarians. Some minor Upanishads as well as monastic orders consider women, child, students, fallen men and others as not qualified for Sannyasa, the dress, the equipage and lifestyle varies between groups. For example, Sannyasa Upanishad in verses 2.23 to 2.29 and those who enter Sannyasa may choose whether they join a group

24.
Dharma
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Dharma is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. There is no single word translation for dharma in western languages, in Buddhism dharma means cosmic law and order, but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for phenomena, Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of tirthankara and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings. For Sikhs, the word means the path of righteousness. The Classical Sanskrit noun dharma is a derivation from the root dhṛ, the word dharma was already in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The antonym of dharma is adharma, the Classical Sanskrit noun dharma is a derivation from the root dhṛ, which means to hold, maintain, keep, and takes a meaning of what is established or firm, and hence law. It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a meaning of bearer, supporter. In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, figuratively, it means sustainer and supporter. It is semantically similar to the Greek Ethos, in Classical Sanskrit, the noun becomes thematic, dharma-. The word dharma derives from Proto-Indo-European root *dʰer-, which in Sanskrit is reflected as class-1 root √dhṛ, etymologically it is related to Avestan √dar-, Latin firmus, Lithuanian derė́ti, Lithuanian dermė and darna and Old Church Slavonic drъžati. Classical Sanskrit word dharmas would formally match with Latin o-stem firmus from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer-mo-s holding, were it not for its development from earlier Rigvedic n-stem. In Classical Sanskrit, and in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Atharvaveda, in Pāli, it is rendered dhamma. In some contemporary Indian languages and dialects it occurs as dharm. Dharma is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion and it has multiple meanings in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is difficult to provide a concise definition for dharma, as the word has a long and varied history and straddles a complex set of meanings. There is no equivalent single word translation for dharma in western languages, there have been numerous, conflicting attempts to translate ancient Sanskrit literature with the word dharma into German, English and French. The concept, claims Paul Horsch, has caused difficulties for modern commentators and translators. Dharma root is dhri, which means ‘to support, hold and it is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant

25.
Artha
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Artha is one of the four aims of human life in Indian philosophy. The word artha literally translates as meaning, sense, goal, Artha is also a broader concept in the scriptures of Hinduism. As a concept, it has multiple meanings, all of which means of life. Artha applies to both an individual and a government, in an individuals context, artha includes wealth, career, activity to make a living, financial security and economic prosperity. The proper pursuit of artha is considered an important aim of life in Hinduism. At government level, artha includes social, legal, economic, proper Arthashastra is considered an important and necessary objective of government. In Hindu traditions, Artha is connected to the three aspects and goals of human life - Dharma, Kama and Moksha. Together, these mutually non-exclusive four aims of life are called Puruṣārtha, Artha as a concept includes multiple meanings. It is difficult to capture the meaning of artha, or related terms of dharma, kama and moksha, john Lochtefeld describes artha as the means of life, and includes material prosperity. Karl Potter explains it as an attitude and capability that enables one to make a living, to remain alive and it includes economic prosperity, security and health of oneself and those one feels responsible for. Artha includes everything in ones environment that allows one to live and it is neither an end state nor an endless goal of aimlessly amassing money, claims Karl Potter, rather it is an attitude and necessary requirement of human life. John Koller takes a different viewpoint than Karl Potters interpretation, john Koller suggests artha is not an attitude, rather it is one of the necessities of human life. Artha, then, is best described as pursuit of activities and means necessary for a joyous, daya Krishna argues that artha, as well as the concept of Puruṣārthas, is a myth. The various schools and ancient Sanskrit texts provide no consensus opinion, notes Krishna, rather they present a debate, inconsistencies and conflicting verses are even present within the same script, such as the Manusmriti. Some of this, suggests Krishna, reflects differences in human needs, perhaps, conjectures Krishna, artha is just a subset of kama and karma. Vatsyayana in Kama Sutra defines artha as the acquisition of arts, land, cattle, wealth, equipages and he explains, artha is also protection of what is already acquired, and the increase of what is protected. Gavin Flood explains artha as worldly success without violating dharma, kama, Flood clarifies that artha in ancient Hindu literature, as well as purushartha, is better understood as a goal of Man. In other words, it is one of the four purposes of human life, the survival and the thriving of humans requires artha - that is, economic activity, wealth and its creation, worldly success, profit, political success and all that is necessary for human existence

26.
Kama
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Kama means desire, wish, longing in Indian literature. Kama is one of the four goals of life in Hindu traditions. It is considered an essential and healthy goal of life when pursued without sacrificing the other three goals, Dharma, Artha and Moksha. Together, these four aims of life are called Puruṣārtha, Kama means “desire, wish or longing”. In contemporary literature, kama refers usually to sexual desire, however, the term also refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture and nature. The concept kama is found in some of the earliest known verses in Vedas, for example, Book 10 of Rig Veda describes the creation of the universe from nothing by the great heat. The Mahabharata, for example, provides one of the definitions of kama. Kama often implies the short form of the word kamana, Kama, however, is more than kamana. Vatsyayana, the author of Kamasutra, describes kama as happiness that is a manasa vyapara, experiencing harmonious music is kama, as is being inspired by natural beauty, the aesthetic appreciation of a work of art, and admiring with joy something created by another human being. Kama Sutra, in its discourse on kama, describes forms of art, dance. Karl Potter describes kama as an attitude and capacity, a little girl who hugs her teddy bear with a smile is experiencing kama, as are two lovers in embrace. During these experiences, the person connects and identifies the beloved as part of oneself and feels more complete, fulfilled and this, in the Indian perspective, is kāma. Hindery notes the inconsistent and diverse exposition of kama in various ancient texts of India, both Sita and Rama, frequently express their unwillingness and inability to live without the other. Gavin Flood explains kama as “love” without violating dharma, artha, in Hinduism, kama is regarded as one of the four proper and necessary goals of human life, the others being Dharma, Artha and Moksha. Ancient Indian literature emphasizes that dharma precedes and is essential, if dharma is ignored, artha and kama lead to social chaos. Vatsyayana in Kama Sutra recognizes relative value of three goals as follows, artha precedes kama, while dharma precedes both kama and artha. Vatsyayana, in Chapter 2 of Kama sutra, presents a series of philosophical objections argued against kama, the pursuit of pleasure, claim objectors, encourages individuals to commit unrighteous deeds, bring distress, carelessness, levity and suffering later in life. These objections were then answered by Vatsyayana, with the declaration that kama is as necessary to human beings as food, just like good food is necessary for the well being of the body, good pleasure is necessary for healthy existence of a human being, suggests Vatsyayana

27.
Moksha
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Moksha, also called vimoksha, vimukti and mukti, is a term in Hinduism and Hindu philosophy which refers to various forms of emancipation, liberation, and release. In its soteriological and eschatological senses, it refers to freedom from saṃsāra, in its epistemological and psychological senses, moksha refers to freedom from ignorance, self-realization and self-knowledge. In Hindu traditions, moksha is a concept and included as one of the four aspects and goals of human life. Together, these four aims of life are called Puruṣārtha in Hinduism, the concept of moksha is found in Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. In some schools of Indian religions, moksha is considered equivalent to and used interchangeably with terms such as vimoksha, vimukti, kaivalya, apavarga, mukti, nihsreyasa. However, terms such as moksha and nirvana differ and mean different states between various schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the term nirvana is more common in Buddhism, while moksha is more prevalent in Hinduism. Moksha is derived from the root Sanskrit, मुच्, muc, in Vedas and early Upanishads, the word Sanskrit, मुच्यते, mucyate appears, which means to be set free or release - such as of a horse from its harness. The definition and meaning of moksha varies between schools of Indian religions. Moksha means freedom, liberation, from what and how is where the schools differ, Moksha is also a concept that means liberation from rebirth or saṃsāra. This liberation can be attained while one is on earth, or eschatologically, some Indian traditions have emphasized liberation on concrete, ethical action within the world. This liberation is a transformation that permits one to see the truth. For example, Vivekachudamani - an ancient book on moksha, explains one of many steps on the path to moksha, as. Samsara originated with religious movements in the first millennium BCE and these movements such as Buddhism, Jainism and new schools within Hinduism, saw human life as bondage to a repeated process of rebirth. This bondage to repeated rebirth and life, each subject to injury, disease. By release from this cycle, the involved in this cycle also ended. This release was called moksha, nirvana, kaivalya, mukti, in earliest Vedic literature, heaven and hell sufficed soteriological curiosities. The rebirth idea ultimately flowered into the ideas of saṃsāra, or transmigration - where one’s balance sheet of karma determined one’s rebirth, along with this idea of saṃsāra, the ancient scholars developed the concept of moksha, as a state that released a person from the saṃsāra cycle. Moksha release in eschatological sense in these ancient literature of Hinduism, suggests van Buitenen, comes from self-knowledge, the meaning of moksha in epistemological and psychological sense has been variously explained by scholars

28.
Maya (illusion)
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Maya, literally illusion or magic, has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In ancient Vedic literature, Māyā literally implies extraordinary power and wisdom, in later Vedic texts and modern literature dedicated to Indian traditions, Māyā connotes a magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem. In Buddhism, Maya is the name of Gautama Buddhas mother, in Hinduism, Maya is also an epithet for goddess, and the name of a manifestation of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, prosperity and love. Maya is also a name for girls, Māyā is a word with unclear etymology, probably comes from the root mā which means to measure. According to William Mahony, the root of the word may be man- or to think, in early Vedic usage, the term implies, states Mahony, the wondrous and mysterious power to turn an idea into a physical reality. Franklin Southworth states the origin is uncertain, and other possible roots of māyā include may- meaning mystify, confuse, intoxicate, delude, as well as māy- which means disappear. Jan Gonda considers the word related to mā, which means mother, as do Tracy Pintchman and Adrian Snodgrass, serving as an epithet for goddesses such as Lakshmi. Maya here implies art, is the power, writes Zimmer. A similar word is found in the Avestan māyā with the meaning of magic power. Words related to and containing Māyā, such as Mayava, occur many times in the Vedas and these words have various meanings, with interpretations that are contested, and some are names of deities that do not appear in texts of 1st millennium BCE and later. The use of word Māyā in Rig veda, in the later era context of magic, illusion, power, the hymn is a call to discern ones enemies, perceive artifice, and distinguish, using ones mind, between that which is perceived and that which is unperceived. Rig veda does not connote the word Māyā as always good or always bad, it is simply a form of technique, mental power and means. Rig veda uses the word in two contexts, implying there are two kinds of Māyā, divine Māyā and undivine Māyā, the former being the foundation of truth. Elsewhere in Vedic mythology, Indra uses Maya to conquer Vritra, varunas supernatural power is called Maya. Māyā, in such examples, connotes powerful magic, which both devas and asuras use against each other, in the Yajurveda, māyā is an unfathomable plan. In the Aitareya Brahmana Maya is also referred to as Dirghajihvi, hostile to gods and sacrifices. In hymns of 8.10.22, Virāj is used by Asuras who call her as Māyā, as follows, The contextual meaning of Maya in Atharvaveda is power of creation, not illusion. Gonda suggests the meaning of Maya in Vedic literature is, wisdom and power enabling its possessor, or being able itself, to create, devise, contrive, effect

29.
Karma
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Karma means action, work or deed, it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual. Good intent and good deed contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deed contribute to bad karma, Karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Asian religions. In these schools, karma in the present affects ones future in the current life, as well as the nature, with origins in ancient India, karma is a key concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Taoism. Karma is the deed, work, action, or act, and it is also the object. Halbfass explains karma by contrasting it with another Sanskrit word kriya, a good action creates good karma, as does good intent. A bad action creates bad karma, as does bad intent, Karma, also refers to a conceptual principle that originated in India, often descriptively called the principle of karma, sometimes as the karma theory or the law of karma. In the context of theory, karma is complex and difficult to define, other Indologists include in the definition of karma theory that which explains the present circumstances of an individual with reference to his or her actions in past. The law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgment, Buddhism and Jainism have their own karma precepts. Thus karma has not one, but multiple definitions and different meanings and it is a concept whose meaning, importance and scope varies between Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other traditions that originated in India, and various schools in each of these traditions. OFlaherty claims that, furthermore, there is a debate regarding whether karma is a theory, a model, a paradigm. Karma theory as a concept, across different Indian religious traditions, shares common themes, causality, ethicization. A common theme to theories of karma is its principle of causality, one of the earliest association of karma to causality occurs in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of Hinduism. For example, at 4.4. 5-6, it states, The relationship of karma to causality is a motif in all schools of Hindu, Jain. Disinterested actions, or unintentional actions do not have the positive or negative karmic effect, as interested. Another causality characteristic, shared by Karmic theories, is that like deeds lead to like effects, thus good karma produces good effect on the actor, while bad karma produces bad effect. This effect may be material, moral or emotional — that is, the effect of karma need not be immediate, the effect of karma can be later in ones current life, and in some schools it extends to future lives. The consequence or effects of karma can be described in two forms, phalas and samskaras. A phala is the visible or invisible effect that is typically immediate or within the current life, the theory of karma is often presented in the context of samskaras

30.
Ethics in religion
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Ethics involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. A central aspect of ethics is the life, the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying. Most religions have a component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Some assert that religion is necessary to live ethically, blackburn states that there are those who would say that we can only flourish under the umbrella of a strong social order, cemented by common adherence to a particular religious tradition. Ethics in Buddhism are traditionally based on the perspective of the Buddha. Moral instructions are included in Buddhist scriptures or handed down through tradition, according to traditional Buddhism, the foundation of Buddhist ethics for laypeople is the Pancasila, no killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, or intoxicants. In becoming a Buddhist, or affirming ones commitment to Buddhism, Buddhist monks and nuns take hundreds more such vows. The sole reliance on traditional formulae or practices, however, can be questioned by Western Buddhists whose main concern is the solution of complex moral problems in the modern world. The Buddha provided some basic guidelines for behavior that are part of the Noble Eightfold Path. The initial percept is non-injury or non-violence to all living creatures from the lowest insect to humans and this precept defines a non-violent attitude toward every living thing. Theravada monk Bhikkhu Bodhi has observed, Buddhist ethics, as formulated in the five precepts, is charged with being entirely negative. T has to be pointed out that the five precepts, or even the longer codes of precepts promulgated by the Buddha, the precepts are only the most rudimentary code of moral training, but the Buddha also proposes other ethical codes inculcating definite positive virtues. The Mangala Sutta, for example, commends reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude, patience, generosity, other discourses prescribe numerous family, social, and political duties establishing the well being of society. And behind all these duties lie the four called the immeasurables — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy. Christian ethics in general has tended to stress the need for love, grace, mercy, with divine assistance, the Christian is called to become increasingly virtuous in both thought and deed, see also the Evangelical counsels. Conversely, the Christian is also called to abstain from vice, Christian ethical principles are based on the teachings within the Bible. They begin with the notion of inherent sinfulness, which requires essential atonement, sin is estrangement from God which is the result of not doing Gods will. Gods will can be summed up by the precept, Love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength

31.
Ahimsa
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Ahimsa means not to injure and compassion and refers to a key virtue in Indian religions. The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hiṃs – to strike, hiṃsā is injury or harm, a-hiṃsā is the opposite of this, i. e. cause no injury, do no harm. Ahimsa is also referred to as nonviolence, and it applies to all living beings—including all animals—in ancient Indian religions, Ahimsa is one of the cardinal virtues and an important tenet of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Ahimsa is a concept, inspired by the premise that all living beings have the spark of the divine spiritual energy, therefore. Ahimsa has also related to the notion that any violence has karmic consequences. While ancient scholars of Hinduism pioneered and over time perfected the principles of Ahimsa, most popularly, Mahatma Gandhi strongly believed in the principle of ahimsa. Ahimsas precept of cause no injury includes ones deeds, words, classical literature of Hinduism such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as modern scholars debate principles of Ahimsa when one is faced with war and situations requiring self-defence. The historic literature from India and modern discussions have contributed to theories of Just War, and theories of appropriate self-defence. The word Ahimsa—sometimes spelled as Ahinsa—is derived from the Sanskrit root hiṃs – to strike, hiṃsā is injury or harm, a-hiṃsā is the opposite of this, There is a debate on the origins of the word Ahimsa, and how its meaning evolved. Mayrhofer as well as Dumot suggest the word may be han which means kill. Schmidt as well as Bodewitz explain the root word is hiṃs and the Sanskrit verb hinasti. Wackernagel-Debrunner concur with the latter explanation, ancient texts use ahimsa to mean non-injury, a broader concept than non-violence. Non-injury implies not killing others, as well as not hurting others mentally or verbally, in classical Sanskrit literature of Hinduism, another word Adrohi is sometimes used instead of Ahimsa, as one of the cardinal virtues necessary for moral life. One example is in Baudhayana Dharmasutra 2.6.23, Ahimsa as an ethical concept evolved in Vedic texts. The oldest scripts, along with discussing ritual animal sacrifices, indirectly mention Ahimsa, the term Ahimsa appears in the text Taittiriya Shakha of the Yajurveda, where it refers to non-injury to the sacrificer himself. It occurs several times in the Shatapatha Brahmana in the sense of non-injury, the Ahimsa doctrine is a late Vedic era development in Brahmanical culture. Bowker states the word appears but is uncommon in the principal Upanishads, Kaneda gives examples of the word Ahimsa in these Upanishads. Other scholars suggest Ahimsa as a concept that started evolving in the Vedas

32.
Asteya
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Asteya is the Sanskrit term for non-stealing. It is a virtue in Jainism and Hinduism, Asteya is considered as one of five yamas in the Yoga school of Hinduism, and as one of ten forms of temperance in Indian philosophy. The practice of asteya demands that one must not steal, nor have the intent to steal anothers property through action, speech and thoughts. Asteya is defined in Hindu scripts as the abstinence, in ones deeds or words or thoughts and it is a widely discussed virtue in ethical theories of Hinduism. For example, in the Yoga Sūtras, Asteya is listed as the third Yamas or virtue of self-restraint, along with Ahimsa, Satya, Brahmacharya and Aparigraha. Asteya is thus one of the five essential restraints in Hinduism and it is part of ethical theory in Hinduism. Sandilya Upanishad identifies ten yamas as a virtue in Yoga, ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, daya, arjava, kshama, dhrti, mitahara and saucha. It explains asteya as neither taking nor coveting anothers property through the actions of body, speech. Patañjali includes asteya in his five ethical precepts, the Epics too mention asteya as a virtue. For example, in Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata, asteya is declared as part of dharma, in Chapter 259 of Moksha dharma parva, the Mahabharata explains asetya, along with satya, ahimsa and other virtues, are necessary for the conduct of the affairs of the world. These virtues are part of dharma, the Epic explains, during anarchy, one thief appropriates what belongs to others. The same thief, explains the Epic, is upset and demands justice when other thieves, however and this means the thief instinctively feels theft is wrong when he is the victim. Dharma cannot selectively apply or favor a few, it must apply to all, indignation for offended rights of property and the virtue of Asteya is thus a universal necessity of a good individual and good society, explains the Mahabharata. Numerous minor Sanskrit scholarly commentaries from ancient India also discuss Asetya, in the Saivite school, for example, Kaundinyas Pancartha Bhasya on Sanskrit scholar Lakulisa includes Asteya in its discussion and analysis of virtues. Hindu scriptures exist in many Indian languages, for example, Tirukkuṛaḷ written between 200 BC and 400 AD, and sometimes called the Tamil Veda, is one of the most cherished classics on Hinduism written in a South Indian language. It discusses the vice of stealing and fraud, dedicating Chapter 29 of Book 1 on Virtues to it, Tirukkuṛaḷ suggests fraud and stealing creates misery and poverty for everyone. Sivaya Subramuniyaswami translates Tirukkuṛaḷs first three verses in Chapter 23 as, He who wishes not to be scorned by others, the mere thought of sin is sin. Therefore, avoid even the thought of stealing from another, a fortune amassed by fraud may appear to prosper, but will all too soon perish altogether

33.
Satya
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Satya is the Sanskrit word for truth. It also refers to a virtue in Indian religions, referring to being truthful in ones thought, speech, in Yoga, satya is one of five yamas, the virtuous restraint from falsehood and distortion of reality in ones expressions and actions. In the Vedas and later sutras, the meaning of the word satya evolves into a concept about truthfulness and is considered an important virtue. It means being true and consistent with reality in ones thought, speech, a related concept, sattva, also derived from sat, means true essence, nature, spiritual essence, character. Sattva is also a guṇa, a psychology concept particularly in the Samkhya school of philosophy, Satya is a central theme in the Vedas. It is equated with and considered necessary to the concept Ṛta – that which is joined, order, rule, nature, balance. Ṛta results from Satya in the Vedas, states Holdrege, as it regulates and enables the operation of the universe, Satya is considered essential, and without it, the universe and reality falls apart, cannot function. In Rigveda, opposed to rita and satya are anrita and asatya, Truth and truthfulness is considered as a form of reverence for the divine, while falsehood a form of sin. Satya includes action and speech that is factual, real, true, however, Satya isnt merely about ones past that is in context in the Vedas, it has ones current and ones future contexts as well. De Nicolás states, that in Rigveda, Satya is the modality of acting in the world of Sat, as the truth to be built, formed or established. Satya is a widely discussed concept in various Upanishads, including the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad where satya is called the means to Brahman, in hymn 1.4.14 of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Satya is equated to Dharma, as Nothing is higher than the Law of Righteousness. The weak overcomes the stronger by the Law of Righteousness, truly that Law is the Truth, Therefore, when a man speaks the Truth, they say, He speaks Righteousness, and if he speaks Righteousness, they say, He speaks the Truth. Taittiriya Upanishads hymn 11.11 states, Speak the Satya, Truth is sought, praised in the hymns of Upanishads, held as one that ultimately, always prevails. The Mundaka Upanishad, for example, states in Book 3, Chapter 1, Sandilya Upanishad of Atharvanaveda, in Chapter 1, includes ten forbearances as virtues, in its exposition of Yoga. It defines Satya as the speaking of the truth that conduces to the well being of creatures, through the actions of ones mind, speech or body. Both these ideas are explained in early Upanishads, composed before 500 BC, in later Upanishads, the ideas evolve and transcend into satya as truth, and Brahman as the Being, Be-ness, real Self, the eternal. The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata states, The righteous hold that forgiveness, truth, sincerity, Truth is the essence of the Vedas. The Epic repeatedly emphasizes that Satya is a virtue, because everything and everyone depends on

34.
Temperance (virtue)
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Temperance is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what an individual voluntarily refrains from doing, Temperance has been described as a virtue by religious thinkers, philosophers, and more recently, psychologists, particularly in the positive psychology movement. In classical iconography, the virtue is depicted as a woman holding two vessels transferring water from one to another. It was one of the virtues in western thought found in Greek philosophy and Christianity. Temperance is one of the six virtues in the positive psychology classification, included with wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, themes of temperance can be seen across cultures and time, as illustrated here. Temperance is an part of the Eightfold Path. The third and fifth of the five precepts reflect values of temperance, misconduct concerning sense pleasures, the concept of dama in Hinduism is equivalent to temperance. It is sometimes written as damah, the word dama, and Sanskrit derivative words based on it, connote the concepts of self-control and self-restraint. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, in verse 5.2.3, states that three characteristics of a good, developed person are self-restraint, compassion and love for all sentinent life, in Hinduism literature dedicated to yoga, self-restraint is expounded with the concept of yamas. According to ṣaṭsampad, self-restraint is one of the six cardinal virtues, the list of virtues that constitute a moral life evolve in vedas and upanishads. Over time, new virtues were conceptualized and added, some replaced, for example, Manusamhita initially listed ten virtues necessary for a human being to live a dharmic life, Dhriti, Kshama, Dama, Asteya, Saucha, Indriyani-graha, dhi, vidya, satyam, akrodha. In later verses this list was reduced to five virtues by the same scholar, the shorter list of virtues became, Ahimsa, Dama, Asteya, Saucha, Satyam. This trend of evolving concepts continue in classical Sanskrit literature, Dama with Ahimsa, the scope of self-restraint includes ones action, the words one speaks or writes, and in ones thoughts. The necessity for temperance is explained as preventing bad karma which sooner or later haunts, the theological need for self-restraint is also explained as reigning in the damaging effect of ones action on others, as hurting another is hurting oneself because all life is one. The Greek definition of temperance translates to “moderation in action, thought, or feeling, Temperance is a major Athenian virtue, as advocated by Plato, self-restraint is one of his four core virtues of the ideal city, and echoed by Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures”, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, temperance is prolific. The Old Testament emphasizes temperance as a virtue, as evidenced in both Solomons Book of Proverbs and in the Ten Commandments, with its admonitions against adultery. The New Testament does so as well, with forgiveness being central to theology, with regard to Christian theology, the word temperance is used by the King James Version in Galatians 5,23 for the Greek word ἐγκρατεία, which means self-control or discipline

35.
Compassion
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Compassion is the response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help them. Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to physical, spiritual. There is also an aspect of compassion which regards a quantitative dimension, such that individuals compassion is often given a property of depth, vigour, the etymology of compassion is Latin, meaning co-suffering. More involved than simple empathy, compassion commonly gives rise to a desire to alleviate anothers suffering. Compassion is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the context as altruism. In ethical terms, the expressions down the ages of the so-called Golden Rule often embodies by implication the principle of compassion, the English noun compassion, meaning to love together with, comes from Latin. Ranked a great virtue in numerous philosophies, compassion is considered in almost all the religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues. Three theoretical perspectives of compassion have been proposed, which are contrasted by their predictions, Compassion as a synonym of empathic distress, which is characterized by the feeling of distress in connection with another persons suffering. This perspective of compassion is based on the finding that people sometimes emulate, Compassion is simply a variation of love or sadness, not a distinct emotion. From the perspective of psychology, Compassion can be viewed as a distinct emotional state, which can be differentiated from distress, sadness. Identifying with another person is a process for human beings. This process is related to compassion because sympathizing with others is possible with people from other countries, cultures, locations. A possible source of process of identifying with others comes from a universal category called Spirit. Toward the late 1970s, very different cultures and nations around the world took a turn to religious fundamentalism, the more one person knows about the human condition and the associated experiences is another route to identification. The importance of identifying with others for compassion is contrasted by the physical and psychological effects of abandonment. Compassion seems to be characteristic of democratic societies, the role of compassion as a factor contributing to individual or societal behavior has been the topic of continuous debate. In contrast to the process of identifying with other people, an absence of compassion may require ignoring or disapproving identification with other people or groups. This concept has been illustrated throughout history, The Holocaust, Genocide, European colonization of the Americas, the seemingly essential step in these atrocities could be the defining of the victims as not human or not us

Photograph of the Surya Temple, The most impressive and grandest ruins in Kashmir, at Marttand-Hardy Cole's Archaeological Survey of India Report 'Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir.' (1869)

The swan is an important motif in Advaita. It symbolises two things: first, the swan is called hamsah in Sanskrit (which becomes hamso if the first letter in the next word is /h/). Upon repeating this hamso indefinitely, it becomes so-aham, meaning, "I am That". Second, just as a swan lives in a lake but its feathers are not soiled by water, similarly a liberated Advaitin lives in this world but is not soiled by its maya.

Representation of temperance (painted wood sculpture, dated 1683, which covers the shrine of the baptismal church Breton Commana in France). Temperance foot tips over a jug of wine, and presents a pitcher of water

Gandhi promoted the principle of Ahimsa very successfully by applying it to all spheres of life, particularly to politics.

The hand with a wheel on the palm symbolises the Jain Vow of Ahimsa. The word in the middle is "Ahimsa". The wheel represents the dharmacakra which stands for the resolve to halt the cycle of reincarnation through relentless pursuit of truth and non-violence.